


you're holding in your hands the two halves of my heart

by Anonymous



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Multi, Pining, Polyamory, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Threesome - M/M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-02-26 15:08:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23171701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: There are two names on Nolan's skin.
Relationships: Nico Hischier/Nolan Patrick, Nico Hischier/Travis Konecny/Nolan Patrick, Travis Konecny/Nolan Patrick
Comments: 21
Kudos: 156
Collections: Anonymous





	you're holding in your hands the two halves of my heart

**Author's Note:**

> i've been sitting on this plot for a while before i decided to finally try it out. i'm pretty excited for it! there will be three chapters total; this one is mostly some ~backstory. the poly/threesome/explicit content will be in upcoming chapters. thank you for reading!

**one**

“Sweetheart,” his mom is murmuring. He groans, snuffling underneath his comforter. “Nolan.”

“No,” he slurs into his pillow.

“Yes,” she sing-songs. Her hand is warm on his shoulder. “Get up, your sisters are already getting dressed.”

“No,” he repeats, but he still stirs. She kisses him on the forehead, murmurs _happy birthday. _He can feel his mattress rise as soon as her weight is gone; he rolls onto his back and stares up at the ceiling.

“Did you look already?” Madison asks him as soon as he’s shuffled out of his room. She’s leaning against the bathroom door, toothbrush in hand, watching him nearly trip on the too-long ends of his pyjama bottoms. “Nolan. Nols. _Nolaaaan_ —“

“Fuck off.”

“Language!” his mom calls from the bedroom down the hallway.

“You fuck off,” Madison says, and slips back into the bathroom.

He hasn’t looked yet, mostly because he doesn’t really care too much and also because he forgot too, but once he gets his turn in the bathroom he pauses in front of the sink, staring at the reflection in the mirror.

He checks his wrists first, sticking them out underneath the harsh yellow light bathing the countertop. They’re both startlingly bare, but he knows it’s not completely unheard of to have a mark somewhere other than the wrists — his eighth grade physed teacher had drilled that into him over and over.

So he tips his head back, praying it’s not on his neck — Helena Pham in first-period Maths has the name _Waleed_ running down the side of hers, which Nolan has noticed she tries to keep covered by a swath of deliberately-styled hair every day — and then, when he comes up blessedly bare, pulls his shirt off.

He runs his fingers down his chest, flinching when he accidentally skirts too low over his belly. He’s focused on the skin over his heart — bare, too — eyebrows furrowing. It takes a moment for him to notice the dark smudges on his ribcage.

He raises his left arm, twisting and squinting at his reflection.

It takes a moment to parse it out — it looks like the word is still sorting itself out, shifting and curling over his pale skin, stretching and stretching.

And stretching — his breath catches in his throat, just — just because _maybe_ his soulmate has a long name, and that’s all this is. 

Just maybe.

The ink keeps stretching.

———

“Oh,” says Doctor Qadr, her glossy fingernails tapping the desk quickly as she reads over his file, “happy birthday, Nolan.”

“Thanks,” he mumbles, only after his mom nudges him.

“Any plans?” She stands from her stool, sticking her hand underneath the sanitizer dispenser on the wall. Nolan watches the foam swirl into her palm with an electric whirring sound. “Fourteen’s pretty cool.”

“We’re going out for breakfast,” his mom pipes up when Nolan doesn’t respond. “And then he’s going to the cinema with his friends, right?”

She turns to give him an expectant look, and he nods obediently. Doctor Qadr smiles, stepping in between his legs and bending down to his height.

“Sounds fun,” she says. Her breath puffs against his cheek as she digs two fingers into his sides, watching the muscles flex. “My girl, she’s turning three next week actually.”

“Really?” Nolan’s mom gasps. Her hand flutters over her heart. “Gosh, I feel as if it was just last week you were on maternity leave. How is she doing?”

Doctor Qadr laughs, flattening her palm over the ink on Nolan’s ribs. Nolan tunes them out, staring at the various posters on the wall behind Doctor Qadr’s head. One of them, in bright rainbow font, says _DO YOU HAVE TOE FUNGUS? // AVEZ-VOUS DES CHAMPIGNONS D’ORTEILS?_

He frowns.

“It’s certainly uncommon,” Doctor Qadr tells them later, her fingers flying over her keyboard, “but it’s not completely unheard of, Mrs Patrick.”

The ink tingles underneath the soft cotton of Nolan’s worn grey Calgary Stampeders shirt.

“He’s perfectly healthy, aside from any physical injury he’s sustained from hockey,” she continues, eyes flicking from the screen of her computer to Nolan’s mom. “I don’t think it’s a side effect of anything wrong with him.”

Nolan’s mom has a stricken look on her face. 

Nolan studies the linoleum tile.

———

“Don’t tell anyone at school,” his dad says. “Or on the team.”

After they’d left the doctor’s office, his mom had called his dad, telling him to round up Madison and Aimee and meet them at Miss Brown’s. By the time they’d arrived, Nolan’s dad was already halfway through his second coffee, and most of the Nutella that had been coating Aimee’s pancakes was smeared on her chin.

“Okay,” Nolan says. He stabs a potato wedge.

“Just — just keep it to yourself for now, alright kiddo?”

He knows his dad is ashamed; thinks it’s weird. His mom is a lot more kind about it, but she probably thinks it’s weird too. Aimee and Madison tease him about it the rest of the day, but he knows that they probably don’t actually care one way or another.

“So. _Nico_.”

Madison sounds casual. She’d snuck into his bedroom once he’d gotten home from the cinema, perching on the foot of his bed and nearly giving him a heart attack when he’d turned from his closet. “And _Travis_.”

“Yeah,” he says slowly. He can feel the beginnings of a headache coming on, throbbing dully by his ear. “That’s what it says.”

“Do we know a Nico? Any Nico?”

“No.” Nolan had spent most of his time in the movie earlier tuning out the loud action playing out on the screen, wracking through the entire student body at school in his mind. He couldn’t recall any Nicos, but he knew that each grade was probably brimming with Travises. “Get out of my room.”

“No.” She pulls out her phone. “Let me check Instagram.”

“Maddie,” he says lowly and, when she doesn’t respond, louder. “Maddie.”

“Do you think it’s Travis Parker?” she asks, ignoring him. “I hate him. Or — oh, maybe it’s Travis O’Connor? He’s kinda weird though.” She gasps suddenly, sticking her phone in Nolan’s face. He bats at it blindly. “Wait, what if it’s _Travis Keen_?”

Nolan can’t see the screen, what with it hanging two centimetres from his eyes, but his stomach still swoops warmly. Travis Keen is a twelfth grader. A very _hot_ twelfth grader. A very hot twelfth grader who plays_ football_.

“If it is Travis Keen, I’ll have to do the right thing,” she continues, yanking her phone back and continuing to scroll. Nolan feels disoriented. “He’s in the twelfth grade, you’re in the ninth. I’ll just kick his pervert ass.”

“_Maddie_,” Nolan stresses. He can feel his cheeks heat up. The idea of Maddie fighting Keen in the middle of the atrium while everyone films them on their cellphones is too horrifying to really even think about, but even more so, too plausible. “No. Don’t — don’t do that.”

“It’s probably not Travis Keen though. I think he’s got, like, the name _Stephanie_ on his wrist. I dunno.”

“Whatever.” Nolan pulls his comforter back and crawls underneath. Maddie is still sprawled over the foot of his bed, zooming in on a photo of Travis Keen in nothing but swim trunks and a snapback. “Can you get the fuck out? I’m tired.”

She walks out without responding, hair falling over her face, focused on her phone, and he grunts before burying his face into his pillow. The space on his ribs where the ink has now settled somehow feels heavier, and after a moment, he slips his hand up underneath his shirt, fingers bumping over the names. The skin there is slightly raised.

He has two names, and it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t care; he knows a lot of people don’t end up falling in love or marrying the name on their skin. He knows that sometimes it’s platonic; that most of the time, when a boy’s got a boy’s name or a girl’s got a girl’s name, they just end up becoming the closest of friends. Sometimes a boy’s got a girl’s name or vice versa and it’s still platonic anyway.

And sometimes it’s — 

Sometimes, it’s just nothing.

**two**

“I wanna break up,” Dallas says.

Nolan stares at the far wall behind Dallas. It’s covered in paintings by students from the art classroom. He can feel his jaw tick.

“Okay,” he says.

Dallas sighs. Nolan thinks, fleetingly, of punching him square in the jaw, feeling the bones crunch underneath his knuckles. It’d be satisfying at the very least, but he’d probably be dragged off from school property by the principal. “See?” Dallas says, scuffing the ground with the toe of his converse. “You don’t even care.”

“Okay,” he says again.

“It’s not cute,” Dallas says. “You’re not cute. You’re a bitch.”

Nolan vaguely feels his heart break in half. “Okay.”

Dallas had texted him in the middle of Geography: _meet me in the atrium Im waiting_. Nolan had dipped immediately, mumbling an excuse to the teacher and taking his books and bag with him. He can’t exactly go back now, so he mills around in the library, staring at the peeling spines of books stacked in the history section until all the lacquered words begin to blur together.

His dad picks him up after school, his hockey gear in the back seat. “School good?” his dad asks, tapping the steering wheel with a finger.

Nolan stares out the window.

After practice, Nolan ducks down a dark hallway, beelining towards the vending machine that’s stood beside the water fountains. 

He eats a Twix bar hidden behind a wall, cheeks wet.

His parents ask him how the day went over dinner; forks clink against plates and the rain pounds against the windows rhythmically. He shrugs and takes a sip of water.

He spends the next week staring out the window during class. He wonders why Dallas broke up with him. Was it because they weren’t soulmates? That was stupid; Dallas had the name _Amanda_ on the left curve of his shoulder. Was it because Dallas’s parents would always compare him to Nolan whenever he’d sleep over? They’d point at him, ask him how hockey’s going, how he’s doing at school, and then look over at Dallas with meaningful eyes, as if to say _look at how much he’s doing; look at how much he’s got going for him_. _What’ve you got?_

If that were the reason, Nolan wouldn’t be surprised. He’d hate it if he were constantly compared to someone else and, as it is, neither hockey nor classes are going great at the moment. His shoulder’s killing him, he’s sat out of three games because of injury, and he can’t see it changing anytime soon. His grades are certainly nothing to write home about; the end of the semester is right around the corner and, along with it, exams, yet he’s not cracked open any textbooks to begin prepping cheat sheets.

A bee flies into the window. He startles.

“Nolan,” Mrs Khachaturian says. The boy sitting at the desk beside him is doodling in his binder; his earbuds are in, and Nolan can faintly hear The Weeknd playing. “Do you know what the proper term to describe young adults leaving home later and staying in school longer is?”

He stares at her quietly.

“Credentialism,” she says, after a beat. “Make note of that because it’ll be on your test and exam.”

“Okay,” he says.

———

His parents always try to bundle him and his sisters over to the local Ukrainian Community Centre at least once every month for Family Nights, and today’s the day, he guesses; they tell him to socialize but he ends up wandering towards the back of the gathering room, sticking his phone in the air to catch some service.

“Travis, huh.”

He was vaguely aware his shirt had been riding up, arms outstretched over his head, but not by _that _much; he hastily pulls his sweater back down over his hips, heart thumping as he focuses on the guy who’s just walked into his space. He wonders if he saw the _Nico_ inked on top of _Travis_.

“Does he go to our school?” the guy asks and, oh.

“Jamie,” Nolan says. He scrubs a hand over his face. “You’re Ukrainian?”

“Right off the bat, huh,” Jamie says, grinning. His hands are shoved in the pocket of his jeans. “Yeah.”

“Jamie _Lancaster_, right?”

“Yeah, Jamie Lancaster,” he huffs, and then, “it’s actually Lytvynenko, right? My parents just changed it when they moved here.” He raises an eyebrow. “Your last name’s _Patrick_, you don’t get to talk.”

“It’s actually Patrebka, right?” Nolan says. He doesn't mean for it to come out mockingly, but it does. Jamie’s smile grows wider.

“That matches your whole look a lot better than Patrick,” he says earnestly, and Nolan’s trying to parse through whatever the fuck_ that_ means, when he adds, “it’s cute. Like you.”

He can’t help it; his breath catches a little, for a second, and then he just feels lame and miserable. Jamie’s in twelfth, a grade above him, just like Dallas. Even more than that, he was a casual friend of Dallas’s too. He can’t help but wonder if Jamie’s just taking the piss out of him.

Jamie’s eyebrows furrow. He steps in close. “I heard you and D broke up,” he says, voice going quiet. He smells good, like body wash. Nolan tries not to inhale. “He was a fucking douchebag, y’know.”

Nolan can’t even breathe now. He runs his tongue over the front of his teeth, and glances over Jamie’s shoulder. A gaggle of adults are tossing their heads back in laughter. Then he looks back at Jamie, and he kind of has to tip his head up to make eye contact, which is weird, because everyone’s usually shorter than he is. His mom, his sisters, his teammates, Dallas.

Jamie smiles again, softer, and leans back. “You’re really cute,” he repeats, and turns away.

Nolan grabs his wrist.

He loses his virginity that evening in the back of a Honda Civic, which he’d never expected but isn’t too disappointed by. He then proceeds to spend most of the summer in Jamie’s bed, and then he’s in twelfth grade and Jamie’s gone off to Japan for University.

He feels more lost than ever. He’s made captain of the Wheat Kings and he spends no more than ten minutes in his room tracing his fingers over the _C_ stitched into his jersey. Everyone in Winnipeg more or less knows who he is, and kids stop him and pull on his navy blue Bauer jacket, the one that’s got _Patrick_ printed on the back, everywhere he goes, toothily asking for signatures and photos. Everyone talks about him as if he’s not there, not _right_ there; he’s a top prospect, there’s no way he’ll go anything but first in the draft, his pedigree is incredible, he’s the whole fuckin’ package. 

His body continues to break and he continues to sit out games. Hockey Canada sends reps to the hospital and to his house and they grin at him and then go and speak quietly to his parents, and he stares at the logo splashed across the backs of their jackets and nearly goes crazy with want; nearly goes crazy with the need to wear that same logo.

Going crazy doesn’t matter in the end; his doctors don’t clear him for training camp and so he won’t be able to play for Canada in the World Juniors. Canada ends up losing to the _States_, in _Montreal_, and it’s embarrassing but also kind of soothing. He leaves the living room as the Americans zip around the ice on their television in glee, gold medals swinging across their necks; his parents are groaning behind him as he trudges up the stairs. He falls face-first into his pillows and wonders what the outcome would’ve been if he’d been there. He wonders if he would’ve made a difference.

“If you were playing,” his dad says over dinner that night, “we would’ve won.”

“You don’t know that,” he mumbles. “Probably not.”

“Of course I know,” his dad says, and reaches for the salad. “You’re not just any kid who’s managed to grab a hockey stick. You’re not some fucking nobody from Ontario who only gets to play because you’re from Oshawa or Kitchener or Guelph or —“ with venom“— _Toronto_. You know what you’re doing, you love what you’re doing. You’re going first in the draft.”

**four**

(He goes second in the draft.)

**three**

Nico Hischier is beautiful.

That’s the first thing Nolan thinks as he watches Nico sweep towards him in the middle of the ice. Nico’s eyes are wide, face open, hair swept back, stick tapping against the ice as he skates to a stop, nearly hip-checking Nolan.

Quebec City is gorgeous this time of year; he and the guys had gotten a tour of the new Centre Vidéotron — “we are hoping to get an, um, NHL team here,” says the woman showing them around. She smiles wistfully. “We can only hope hockey comes back home, eh?” — then they’d first arrived at their hotel, some antique European-style building from the 1800s. After that, they’d been left to their own devices. He had went with some of the guys to sightsee downtown, checking out the tall government buildings, scarfing down decadent poutines and pecan butter tarts, taking photos of a giant mural of Bonhomme.

They’d only gotten that half a day to fuck around, and then it was back to work; Nolan had been at practice earlier, meeting the team, and now he’s got this dumb photo shoot but Nico makes eye contact with him and now he can’t breathe properly and suddenly it’s not as dumb as he initially thought it was.

_“Five scouts ranked the six-foot-two, one hundred and ninety-eight—pound Patrick No. one; five scouts ranked the six-foot-one, one hundred and seventy-six-pound Hischier No. one. The Swiss pivot has closed the gap with his dynamic play, which came at a time when Patrick's injury-riddled season was ended prematurely by an upper-body ailment that wasn’t related to the groin/abdominal issues that plagued him for the first half of the season.”_

“Hey,” Nolan says. Nico’s Team Orr jersey flutters as he holds his hand out, the white colour pretty against his skin. The C on his chest is parallel to the one on Nolan’s own.

“Hi,” Nico says, grinning. He’s got dark eyebrows, dark hair, and a kind smile. “Is so good to meet you.” 

His voice is deep but it’s not gravelly like Nolan’s; it’s smooth, fits him. Nolan knew he was from Europe but he’s still startled by the accent.

“Yeah,” Nolan says. They’re both wearing their gloves so there’s no chance to actually navigate a handshake; they fist bump as a woman steps up behind Nico, straightening his jersey out over his hips, fluffing his hair.

“Alright boys,” the photographer says. There’s so much gear set up on the ice, so many people reaching out to touch him and Nico, someone smoothing down the material that’s bunched up by his shoulders. “We’re going to take a few shots, nothing that’ll take too long.”

It takes a long time. They stand back-to-back, holding their sticks out menacingly, and then kneel in front of each other, gloves touching. The photographer takes shot after shot, asking them to switch up their position every so often, pointing out their slack shoulders whenever they take a breath.

By the time it’s over the knees of Nolan’s jeans are damp and he sees spots in his eyes from the camera flash.

“That was a lot,” Nico says on a laugh. They’re climbing off the ice; Nolan tosses his stick to the side beside the benches, then turns just in time to watch Nico gently stack his back in the racks. He feels his face go hot. “Thought it would go forever!”

“Yeah,” Nolan says. Nico smiles at him again, and then pulls his jersey off. The red shirt he has underneath goes up along with it, and Nolan’s given an eyeful of his flexing abs. “I —“

“Are you excited for game?” Nico asks. He drapes his jersey over his arm and reaches up to pat his hair down. He’s go a strand sticking up, wobbling in the drafty air of the rink, and Nolan has to hold himself back from smoothing it down himself. “We beat you, you know.”

He winks. It looks effortless, and Nolan takes a second to admire it. He’s never been able to wink.

“Don’t be so sure,” he says after a beat. There’s no reporters in the room — they’re all in the hallways of the building, probably anxiously waiting for the top prospects, wondering if Nolan and Nico are currently duking it out on the ice with their fists, vying for that number one spot. The photographer and his crew don’t seem particularly interested in whatever they’re saying, crowded around the a laptop and mulling over what they think are the best shots, and it relaxes Nolan. It scares him sometimes, a little, how people over the years have suddenly begun to care about what he says. “I’ve seen your roster, s’not that good. Stelio’s fine, I guess.”

“Stelio?”

Nolan raises an eyebrow. “What, don’t know your team yet? Not very captain-like.” Nico looks genuinely worried now, so Nolan bumps his shoulder. “Kidding, kidding. I barely know anyone either.”

Nico stares at him. “You don’t know your team yet? You’re bad captain.”

Nolan gapes at him. Nico bumps his shoulder.

“Kidding,” he says, and winks again. Before Nolan can even respond, one of the social media interns for the CHL passes through the gates, eyes lighting up when she spots the two of them.

“Hey guys, we’ve got some people from CBC and the likes waiting out front,” she says, draping an arm over Nolan’s shoulders. “If you could give them a few quick soundbites, that’d be totally awesome.”

“Of course,” Nico says. 

The hallway is as crowded as he thought it’d be; as soon as they appear in the doorway, camera phones start going off. It’s mostly a rehash of things he’s heard before — “are you excited for the game?”, “how’s the team?”, “what do you love most about hockey?”, and Nolan swallows thickly, stumbling over his words.

Nico, on his part, beams. “I love to hockey,” he tells one reporter, and she laughs. Nolan does too, without thinking about it, and Nico’s brows furrow in confusion. “Is that wrong?”

“No,” Nolan tells him, “no, it’s — it’s not wrong,” and Nico beams again and, yeah, it’s definitely not wrong.

———

When Nolan leaves his room the next morning for breakfast, Kailer’s standing by the elevators downstairs, holding a lobby copy of _Le Journal de Québec_. He’s focused on it, head bent down, hair falling over his eyes, and Nolan sneaks up behind him, jabbing him in the side with a finger.

“You know how to read, bud?” Nolan asks him, and Kailer just rolls his eyes, shuffling the paper closed.

“Nah. Just saw this pic of you with your boyfriend.”

Nolan frowns at him, gaze sliding from Kailer’s smug face to the front of the paper. In the centre is a tall photo of him and Nico back-to-back; they’re both smiling, but Nolan can admit that they’re the most awkward smiles he’s ever seen. The by-line underneath the photo reads _Nolan Patrick et Nico Hischier se préparent pour le match des meilleurs espoirs lundi_.

“You’re famous now,” Kailer says, slapping the paper against Nolan’s chest. Nolan clutches it without thinking. “See you at breakfast, dude.”

“Yeah,” Nolan says distractedly. He waits until Kailer’s disappeared before unfolding the paper again, staring at the photo.

He’d felt too self-conscious to look at Nico too closely the day before, but he takes his time now: Nico’s only the slightest bit shorter than him, a little more willowy. Even under the jersey Nolan can make out the broadness of his shoulders, the vein running along the side of his neck.

He ducks behind a wall and tears the photo out of the wrinkled page, turning the paper over and sliding it underneath a copy of Macleans before he heads over to the dining hall.

———

Nolan sees his name on the pale inside of Nico’s wrist before he hits him.

He’s skating _hard_; he’s got the puck on the right side of his stick, but Nico’s skating hard too, nearly breathing down his neck. His stick is skirting right next to Nolan’s, and he’s going to steal the puck, and Nolan can’t let that happen — there are ten thousand people watching, sure, but there are scouts, too, and Hockey Canada, and just — he can’t.

He smashes into Nico’s side, almost too violently; Nico’s about to hit the boards but Nolan wraps an arm around his waist without thinking, pulling Nico into his chest before he can crash. Nico looks confused, and they’ve lost the puck, and Nolan’s face is on fucking fire. He lets Nico go and pushes backwards, breathing hard. Nico reaches up to adjust his visor, and Nolan’s eyes are drawn to the sliver of skin between his glove and his jersey.

It’s upside down and covered in shadows but it’s undoubtedly his name. “Fuck,” he breathes, and Nico just looks more confused, throwing him one last look before he skates off in the other direction. Nolan grips his stick tight, licks his lips, and then turns to follow.

He steals the puck from Orr’s 67, stick handles it as he waits for enforcement that never comes, and Orr’s 6 swats it away in the other direction. Paquette gets a power play for team Cherry; the announcer calls it out in French. Nolan’s breathing hard as he positions himself directly beside Nico, who spits onto the ice before glancing at him.

“Are you okay?” he pants, but it’s smothered over by the blow of the whistle, and Nolan lunges forward.


End file.
